Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

LINKEDIN: LinkedIn continues to demonstrate it’s ‘tin ear’

So, imagine my surprise when Linkedin Corporation wrote to me today telling me that they’d suspended my group called “Keep STRONG!” – ostensibly for this well-worn-out old Linkedin reason: “The LinkedIn Groups feature is meant for like-minded peers who have a similar base of professional experience. Group members should have some structured
off-line association with other professionals. We do not feel your group goes with bringing like minded professionals together in the LinkedIn manner. We have suspended this group at this time.”

Here is the group description I wrote for the group “Keep STRONG!”: “It is NOT your job to help those who seek to drag you down, to weaken you. That’s their job. Your job is to acquire as much encouragement as is needed for you to have a healthy life. YOUR job is to Keep STRONG!!”

{Extraneous Deleted}

Thanks,
Vincent Wright

*** end quote ***

LinkedIn continues to demonstrate it’s ‘tin ear’ to it’s champions. They better hope the next better idea doesn’t come along until after they cash out.

:-(

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 13:33 and is filed under LINKEDIN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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With all due respect, with SEC regs being what they are, what would you expect them to say? “No interest” will be right up to when they put the “Sold” sign out.

>these LIONs are not who made LinkedIn what they are.

I don’t know about the “LIONS” per se. I do know a lot of people, eagerly adopted LinkedIn when they were a fledgling business. (Including me!) AND, they have changed from an “invite anyone you know” to “invite your friends” to “be circumspect about who you invite”. They morphed as they wanted to change their image.

>They are the ones who cheapen the tool

I don’t know how you cheapen a tool?

>what is the point of having 15,000 contacts

I’ll agree that I don’t see the point of 15k contacts. But, also, participating in LinkedIn isn’t “networking”. People mistake me for a mega guy because I have over a thousand. Running an alumni group makes me known, and I know a lot of people.

>There is absolute zero benefit that comes from having so many contacts

Super-connectors allow others to reach across a large network. So, I disagree with your ‘zero’ assessment.

>you can harass a large amount of people at any given time with your
>stupid spam or headhunter messages.

That’s sounds like you’re referring to me personally. I assume you have some evidence that I’ve done that. I’d like to see that?

>LinkedIn doesn’t want that.

That’s nice. But that isn’t the inet service model. LinkedIn puts its service out with a TOS and people use it as they see fit. They don’t get to have ‘wants’.

>Headhunters aren’t even allowed to have their recruiting service because they
> simply pester the crap out of people.

And, who, other than crazy amateurs like me, do they think are buying all those inmail messages?

That’s one opinion. I’ll stand by my opinion that LinkedIn is at risk to a ‘better mousetrap’ because of their ‘tin ear’ to the user community.

You might want to read some of my other posts about LinkedIn, if this one upsets you so much. LinkedIn has allowed all sorts of “users” in their system when it suits them. They built their numbers by allowing “non real people” to be built. And, they haven’t purged their files. Even when obvious frauds were called to their attention.

Having millions of users is important. Regardless of reality! When that new owner does come along, they may want a real count of what they are buying.

I am not sure where you are getting your information from about LinkedIn but it is highly inaccurate. LinkedIn has expressed absoulutely no interest in selling the company so your comment about them “trying to ‘buff it up’ for a sale” is absolute garbage. As I said in my earlier post, I listened to the CEO speak last week and he made sure that everyone there knew that selling the company was not a possibility. He did say that a potential IPO may be a possibility several years down the road however. Also, as I tried to point it out in my previos post, these LIONs are not who made LinkedIn what they are. They are the ones who cheapen the tool by continually making contacts with anyone and everyone in order to make their network bigger. But what is the point of having 15,000 contacts if you only know 200-300 of them in real life. None of those people can vouch for you or your business practices thus making you and insignificant part of their huge network. There is absolute zero benefit that comes from having so many contacts other than the fact that you can harass a large amount of people at any given time with your stupid spam or headhunter messages. LinkedIn doesn’t want that. That is why they will not sell their recruiting tools to anyone but direct employers. Headhunters aren’t even allowed to have their recruiting service because they simply pester the crap out of people. Get with the program, LinkedIn doesn’t need the LIONs, the LIONs need LinkedIn to feel important.

I hope you realize that the purpose of LinkedIn is not to have the most contacts. In fact most “LIONs” completely miss the point of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is supposed to be a tool to help you successfully manage your personal network of contacts. This means that you should actually know everyone you are connecting with and be a useful member of their network. Personally, I believe that you should only make connections with people that you could personally vouch for in one way or another. I listened to the CEO of LinkedIn speak last week and he happens to agree. LIONs are a group of people who actually weaken how strong of a tool that LinkedIn could be. I personally am glad that LinkedIn is in the process of created certain systems that will help limit how annoying you LIONs can be.

Frankly the description of your group makes no sense to me either. Maybe you need to further explain the value of the group – how will it assist in professional growth/networking? Until you can do that, LI did everyone a favor by suspending it.